Kneeling on the medal stand

18Aug

Pardon this brief departure from the genea-games, but I need to rant a little. Men’s gymnastics has always been about power, but women’s gymnastics has been about style, grace, and skill, at least until this olympics. I never thought I would see the day when a gymnast who fell to her knees on landing would qualify for a medal. But the current scoring scheme, which was of course supposed to correct the problems associated with the old “perfect 10” scheme has also fallen far short of sticking the landing. Of course we already knew there was no such thing as justice in the gymnastics world after the last olympics. So China’s Cheng Fei got up off of her knees to accept the bronze medal, knocking Alicia Sacramone off of the medal stand in spite of the fact that she had performed to good vaults with a hop on the landings. Those hops which were deadly under the old scoring system were routine at this olympics. I think it only fitting the Cheng Fei should have to accept her medal on her knees.

2 responses to “Kneeling on the medal stand”

I don’t normally comment on my on articles, but this needs to be said. The entire scoring system favors those who attempt more difficult routines unless there is a tie, then the top spot goes to the one with higher execution scores. Talk about arbitrary. I will fully acknowledge a little lack of objectivity here since it was once again the Chinese performer who got the gold and an American who got the silver because of a technicality in the scoring system. I fully realize that the powers that be in world gymnastics could care less about what a librarian from Shawnee, American thinks about their system. But they had better take serious these inequities or they will lose what little audience they have. And to set the record straight, I think Paul Hamm should have offered to relinquish the gold medal when the system gave it to him unfairly. Just finishing out my rant. Maybe I should have held this post until the games were over, because I’m sure I will find more things to rant about.

Okay, I spoke too soon about what was wrong with the system. It is not giving more weight to performance it is purely arbitrary. If they don’t want to give two gold medals why don’t they just flip a coin, it wouldn’t be any less arbitrary than the current tie-breaker. The powers that be in gymnastics need to face the fact that their system is broken and fix it before the next olympics.